While it might not hit the insane numbers that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has, Rainbow Six Siege's 25 million+ total players is a far cry from the games initial branding as a failure. Since its Operation White Noise update, it seems Ubisoft continues to top records as Siege has surpassed 100,000 concurrent players on Steam alone.
The update concludes Siege's second year worth of post-game content, adding three new operators, a new map and significant overhauls to in-game mechanics like the pistol recoil.
With new operators in particular, Siege changes up its entire meta. This time, it's done so by keeping Defending roamers on their toes, as Dokkaebi can hack into the phones of every enemy, giving her an audio cue as to where they are. Not only that, but if the Defender falls while she is around, she can tap into all of the enemy team's remaining cameras.
Of course, Vigil and Zofia add to this new meta too, with the former acting similar to that of a walking Mute jammer, becoming invisible to drones and the latter using a combination of concussion and lethal grenades to traverse around. Not to mention Zofia can also revive herself to one HP from a downed-but-not-out state.
These changes have proven incredibly popular over the course of the game's two year run, as shown by White Noise prompting a Steamchart level of 100,000 concurrent players. That placed it fourth on Steam's list of most played games, below big hitters like PUBG, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. This has fluctuated since, but Siege remains in the top six.
Even more impressive for Rainbow Six Siege is that this number count only factors in Steam's numbers. A significant portion of the title's player base logs directly into Ubisoft's Uplay client. Of course, the publisher has responded well to these numbers, planning a whole third year worth of content, starting with Operation Chimera and its accompanying Outbreak limited event.
KitGuru Says: Siege might not have won The Game Award's Best Ongoing Game, but it continues onward and upwards as it defies its expected failure. Are you enjoying Operation White Noise?